Description
Germany Bamberg SEL
Italian Chip demo 1980
SEL started testing these cards from Turin, Italy in January 1980. They manufactured their own version by June, but discontinued soon after. You may see dates on some of the German cards used at SEL.
After some initial testing early in 1980 with chip card technology from Turin, Italy, SEL began testing with Copytex later in November 1980. The chip technology was found to be of poor security, and SEL wanted an inexpensive card, that still retained features that were difficult to counterfeit. Copytex had developed a low priced paper card that employed “LICHTDURCHLASSIGKEIT”, a secret area on the card that allowed special light to pass through (infrared?) was used to authenticate the card before allowing magnetic units to be used from the magstripe. The goal was to set up phonecard payphones for the field trials in the city of Bamberg 1983-1985.
In this section we are please to show a very comprehensive look at the cards used in development.
The copytex cards were initially designed for copy machines in universities, and other facilities, but Copytex had it’s initial market success with the Bamberg trials, and we know of NO significant copycard systems at the time of these test and trials 1980-1985. All of the cards shown here are part of the PHONECARD development of SEL. SEL were acquired by Alcatel in 1986, and Alcatel began developing it’s own version of the Copytex technology. This is why early Alcatel cards are actually of paper, with same position magstripe from around 1986-1987.
Please turn to Belgium Alcatel to see the connection:
Alcatel BELL